AI researchers envisage a time when machines and robots will be capable of performing almost every job a human canGetty Images

Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) is automating away ever more jobs. What will the jobs of the future be? And will everyone ultimately need a job or are there alternative ways of finding income and purpose?

Amid gloomy forecasts of mass unemployment, there’s a steady drumbeat of cheerful counter-claims that we have little to worry about. The latest comes from Cognizant, an American multinational corporation specialising in IT. Entitled 21 Jobs of the Future, it argues that lost jobs will be replaced by ones that “will create mass employment, providing work for the many people in offices, stores and factory floors displaced or disrupted by technology”.